Thursday, November 29, 2012

Life Links 11/29/12

Wesley Smith links to a Daily Mail article which discussing how doctors in the UK are dehydrating infants to death.

The LCP was devised by the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute in Liverpool for care of dying adult patients more than a decade ago. It has since been developed, with paediatric staff at Alder Hey Hospital, to cover children. Parents have to agree to their child going on the death pathway, often being told by doctors it is in the child's ‘best interests' because their survival is ‘futile'.

Bernadette Lloyd, a hospice paediatric nurse, has written to the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health to criticise the use of death pathways for children.'‘I have also seen children die in terrible thirst because fluids are withdrawn from them until they die'

She said: ‘The parents feel coerced, at a very traumatic time, into agreeing that this is correct for their child whom they are told by doctors has only has a few days to live. It is very difficult to predict death. I have seen a "reasonable" number of children recover after being taken off the pathway.

‘I have also seen children die in terrible thirst because fluids are withdrawn from them until they die.

Yes, you read that right. Planned Parenthood is excited that they have contributed to a whopping twelve adoptions in six years. If we do some simple math that comes out to an average of two adoptions a year.

Last year alone, Planned Parenthood of Indiana performed 5,250 abortions.

5,250.

That means that if 2011 was an average adoption year, Planned Parenthood helped with one adoption for every 2,625 abortions they performed. Perhaps they should send their adoption counselors back to job training.

"As an advocacy organization, we don't feel it's appropriate to promote the value of those with Down syndrome while at the same time also discussing the possibility of abortion," Tolleson told me.

Notably, he said, this sentiment was given voice within NDSC by so-called self-advocates, adults living with Down syndrome who are participating in ever-greater numbers in the outreach and education efforts of such organizations.

"Our self-advocates told us that it was not appropriate in a pamphlet coming from their advocacy organization to talk about abortion as co-equal to any other option," Tolleson explained. "They did not feel that was respectful to them."